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Frahang-i Pahlavig


Frahang-i Pahlavīg ("Pahlavig dictionary"; Persian: فرهنگ پهلوی‎‎, IPA: [fæɾˈhæŋɡ-e pæhlæˈviː]) is a dictionary of (mostly) Aramaic ideograms with Middle Persian translations (in Pahlavi script) and transliterations (in Pazend script). The glossary was previously known to Indian Zoroastrians (the Parsis) as the mna-xvatay (traditionally pronounced mona khoda), a name derived from the first two words of the first entry/lemma. The Frahang-i Pahlavig should not be confused with the Frahang-i Oim-evak, which is a glossary of Avestan language terms.

The oldest surviving example of a Frahang-like text is a one-page fragment discovered at Turpan that is believed to date to the 9th or 10th century CE. Several more complete manuscripts exist in Bombay, Oxford, Paris, and Copenhagen, but the oldest of these dates to the 15th century and is missing a second folio and all of folio 28 onwards. In the earliest edition made available to European scholarship, the Frahang is arranged serially; that is, according to the shape of the Aramaic characters. That edition, obtained by Abraham Anquetil-Duperron in the mid-18th century, is today in the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris. In 1867, Hoshangji Jamaspji Asa and Martin Haug published a transcript of a manuscript that was arranged thematically by chapter.

The existence of similar glossaries from Akkadian times (there explaining Sumerian ideograms) led an Assyriologist, Erich Ebeling, to explain that many of the words in the Frahang were derived from Sumerian or Akkadian. This led to a number of "far-fetched interpretations," which were then subsequently incorporated into a number of later interpretations, including those of Iranists, so effectively making even these unreliable.


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